Number Girl
by Thinker6
Summary: Taylor Hebert gets the power to see the numbers that underlie reality. But what will she do when the numbers show her the truth about her former best friend Emma?
1. Chapter 1

I know the precise moment when I realized that I was losing my mind. It was when I stopped calling for help. When I stopped hoping to escape. When I accepted my fate as inevitable.

I was trapped in my locker face-first, my face mashed into a pile of filth. I might have had a chance at withstanding it if only I could do something to center myself, something to release my emotions. But I couldn't move. I had barely enough room to bang my elbows against the door. I couldn't even _scream_. I couldn't even open my mouth without letting the bloody offal mash against my lips and flood into my throat. Every breath I took worked the scent of rot deeper into my nostrils and sinuses.

After my first ten minutes trapped in that cramped space the raw physical sensations began to fade. I had accepted my fate. I wasn't any calmer, though. It left me free to concentrate on the _mental_ dimension of my torment, and my revulsion and disgust only grew.

It was Emma who did this to me. It had to be her. She must have plotted it with her hangers-on Sophia and Madison. They had been going easy on me for the last few months and I had taken that as a sign that they had _finally_ gotten bored with bullying me and were moving to other targets. Instead it turned out to be a sign that they had been _plotting_, waiting for the right moment to bury me in a bigger pile of shit than ever.

Stupid of me. But how could I have expected them to keep going? To be so goddamned _persistent_ in hurting me for no reason whatsoever? Her betrayal was so fucking _senseless_ that I had always, deep in my heart, held out a thin strand of hope that she'd come to her senses. That one day she'd realize how stupid she'd been and beg for my forgiveness, that she'd tearfully plead with me to go back to the happy world we'd shared a few short years ago.

I screamed out in my mind. Why? Why did she turn against me?

I received no answer.

Why can't she be my friend again? What would it take to make this shit stop forever?

I received no answer.

I squeezed my eyes shut, squeezed my mouth and nostrils shut, squeezed my _mind_ shut, tried to block out the world and cruel indifference of those around me and tried to send myself back to happier times through sheer force of will. Images flashed to the front of my mind. Sleeping over at Emma's house, playing board games with her on my birthday, chasing each other in the park under the watchful eyes of our mothers.

Why couldn't we go back to those happy times again? Why-

...

...

My eyes shot wide open. _I got an answer, this time!_

The images from the past were joined by images of _futures_. Sleeping over at Emma's house, playing computer games with her at her house, talking a walk together in the park and joking about the boys we liked in class. I could hear the laughter of children in the park, smell the scent of greasy food from the food carts we passed, taste the ice cream we ordered from the jolly old man behind the counter. Stronger were the _inner_ sensations, the feelings and emotions that swelled within me. Joy. Tranquility. The sense of playful cheer behind the arch of an eyebrow and the curve of a smile. The simple delight in the company of my favorite companion and confidante.

The sensations were intoxicating. Overwhelming. Replacing the disgusting world of the now with the wonderful world that _could be_. And most intoxicating of all was the sense of absolute certainty they carried. I instantly knew I could trust the visions. These weren't mere conjectures, mere wishful thinking. They were _possible worlds_.

It was possible. It was certainly, definitely possible. We could do it. It was right there, before my eyes, so close I could reach out and touch it.

_Emma and I could be friends again._

Then the world in my mind shivered, split, and multiplied. Then multiplied again, and again, and again, in the span of seconds dividing exponentially into a great _tree_ of futures, branching, twisting, tangling, forming a vast mosaic of worlds spread across more dimensions than I could perceive.

And as my vision grew...I lost sight of that shining golden path. I could see everything, and yet I could see nothing. The raw sensations were crystal clear as ever but I couldn't _understand_ them. Far too much information for my mind to handle. A deluge from a firehose, if the 'firehose' was the size of continents, worlds, entire dimensions.

I desperately searched for that golden path but it was futile. The best I could do was look for patterns, similarities, hints of motion or objects or emotions that were common enough to be shared among vast segments of the billions upon billons of worlds. As I tried to make sense of the mosaic I _demanded_ that it show me the futures I wanted.

Where is Emma my friend?

The mosaic of futures heard my call and _shifted_. The great bulk of them stayed in place but a small fraction of them shuffled around the others in a delicate dance and gathered together to form a small, barely perceptible cluster split off from the whole. Their joyous sights and sounds and emotions set them off in contrast to the rest of the mosaic, a thin sliver of shining light set off against the great bulk of darkness. The light weighed its mass against the darkness and gave me the answer. The precise, pristine, and absolute truth.

_0.0165479017645719% chance that Emma would be my friend again._

...and with that...my heart shattered. My exhilaration dissipated like a dream exposed to the sunlight.

I didn't truly understand the overwhelming sea of visions before my eyes. I didn't know what had granted me this instant of insight into my fate. But I knew it was the truth. The truth of my existence in the now. The truth of my existence in the future. The truth of what my best friend had done to me, the true and absolute extent of her betrayal.

Was my fate determined from the start? Had my visions of hope been a cruel joke, designed to rub my face into the fact that their likelihood was infinitesimal? Was I going to be a victim forever?

As if in reply, the master mosaic of futures in my mind was joined by a _window_ beside it, like a viewing pane of translucent, smoky glass. The window gave me a second view of the futures within the mosaic, a blurry view that left the universes shadowy and indistinct.

I peered through the window and found that its view was rigid, inflexible. Its focus in time was set to a fixed distance in the future and it sorted the worlds into a pair of categories that I couldn't change, that wouldn't bend to my will. On one side were the futures where I was a _victim_. Blurry worlds of darkness and panic, worlds where I was trapped and confined, or running or hiding from pursuers. On the other side were the futures where I was _free_. Going about my daily affairs unmolested, where the bullies left me alone, even a small sliver of worlds where I was chasing them, making Emma scurry through the school hallways in fear of me.

_92.4% chance of being free from attack in one hour's time._

I watched the number tick up slowly with each passing second. 92.5%. 92.6%. That was good. I wouldn't be trapped forever. I wouldn't die. Someone would come to save me.

But ending today's torment wasn't enough. I had been suffering for more than a year, dying a death by slow degrees. If Emma and her gang kept going, if this happened again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and the week after that-

The master mosaic heard my demand. The futures shifted in place, merging into a whole and then dividing once more into two clusters, the first cluster far larger than the second. The worlds seemed to pulse and shiver as they settled into place, and a sharp wave of pain shot through my skull, striking me with the force of a physical blow.

_91.815012855012692% chance of Emma bullying me again._

I reeled, tears forming in my eyes, and let out a wail of despair. No! I had known it for months, but _seeing_ my fate with my new certainty was, was...I sobbed. No. No. I don't want to be saved by someone who doesn't care for me. By a teacher or a janitor who sees me as a burden, as a waste of space who makes trouble for them by letting myself get bullied and shoved into lockers.

I wanted Emma to care for me again. To realize that she'd betrayed me, how she'd hurt me, and to want to make it better again. I wanted Emma to let me out of the locker, to admit she was wrong, to apologize, to beg for my forgiveness and stop the bullying and promise me that she'd do whatever it took to earn my trust and bring the good times back and be my friend again and-

The master mosaic shifted in place once more. The worlds moved more slowly this time, more roughly, and didn't slot into place as elegantly as before. As if they were _angry_ at being disturbed and forced to move again. As they shifted in place they grated against each other, sending sparks of pain flickering through my skull. I gritted my teeth and forced them to keep moving, pushed them into the two clusters of futures I demanded. One cluster was vast and all-encompassing. The other consisted of mere tens of billions of worlds, so thin a sliver of fates that it barely existed at all.

_0.0000016547901764% chance of Emma freeing me from the locker and apologizing and ending the bullying and becoming my friend again._

A near impossibility. My new sight told me that it was a worse chance than winning the lottery.

But...but at the same time, my sight gave me the absolute certainty that those futures were _real_. They were possible. As small of a chance as it was, there was some action I could take, some lucky break I could catch, that would surely, suely, surely lead me to the shining, golden future that would free me from my torment and give me back everything that I had lost.

I wanted to see it. Even if I couldn't have it for myself, even if I would only get a glimpse that I couldn't hold in my sight long enough to _use_...at that moment, I wanted to see it more than anything. I would give anything to cling to that hope, to keep it within my grasp, to watch my future self end my suffering once and for all.

_Show me_, I demanded.

The mosaic didn't move.

_Show me!_

_Show me!_

_Show me!_

I pushed, and the mosaic slowly began to shift, to distort. The infinitesimal sliver of golden futures drew closer to my eyes, the individual worlds becoming more distinct from each other. Their chaotic whirlpool of color and motion grew slightly more ordered, their cacophany of sounds grew slightly more understandable.

But the futures resisted me. As they shifted they struggled to stay in place, ground against each other, refused to part ranks. Every touch sent new sparks of pain shooting through my skull.

I resolved to push harder. Whatever pain it cost me couldn't be worse than the suffering I knew was waiting for me in the future if I failed. With every push the mosaic ripped, tore apart, shattered, and that shattering was pain but it was what I wanted because the golden futures were drawing nearer until I could almost taste them again.

I pushed harder, felt the pain blossom in my head until my eyes watered, pushed harder, felt a wail burst from my lips and bile rise in my throat, pushed harder, screamed and barely noticed the refuse in the locker spill into my throat because God I was wrong it the pain was so much worse than anything I could have imagined, pushed harder, felt the pain of shoving a red hot poker through the back of my skull, pushed harder, and-

And then, for a single, shining moment, I had my answer.


	2. Chapter 2 - Interlude

"Ems, hey Ems! Guess what?" whispered Madison.

"What is it, Mads?" said Emma.

"Jake told me he just heard the loser girl's voice from inside the locker. You know what that means?"

Emma's eyes widened. "She's still in there?"

Madison nodded, her expression a mix of awe and fear. "I told you that was a dirty trick, what you told everyone, but holy shit. I think _nobody_ reported it yet. Not a single one. It's like you have a superpower Emma."

"Oh God." gasped Emma. Then she laughed. "I _am_ pretty spectacular aren't I? Good. This is proof that _everyone_ gets it. They know who's the queen and who's the peasant here. Right Sophia?...Sophia? Sophia, are you okay?"

Sophia was leaning against the wall, bracing herself with her hands to keep herself from falling to the floor. She blinked, squinted up at Emma and pushed herself upright. "Agh. Thought I saw...nevermind. Must have pushed myself too hard on my morning run."

"Hey, don't push yourself too hard." said Emma, putting a hand on Sophia's shoulder. "I know track team is serious business for you, but you don't want to be worn out when it's time to take care of _real_ business."

"Touched that you care, Ems." said Sophia. "Don't worry about me. I've got it handled."

"If you say so." said Emma.

"Um." said Madison. "Listen. Do you guys think we should get her out of there?" She leaned forward and spoke in an urgent whisper. "We could get in so much trouble. What if she gets crippled? My mom told me what happens to people who get trapped in confined places. What if loser girl goes crazy and _twisted_ in there. Like what if she scratches her eyes out or something, or tries to claw her way out and tears off her fingernails and gets an infection, or-"

"Whoa whoa whoa." said Sophia with a chuckle. "Scraches her eyes out? You're twisted too, Mads."

"Says you." said Madison. "Look, let's tell a teacher she's in there. We'll get credit for reporting it. Take off some of the heat."

"It sounds to me like you're chickening out." said Sophia. "Such a bad idea. That's how criminals get caught. Getting a case of the nerves and returning to the scene of the crime."

"Hmm..." said Emma. She looked between Madison and Sophia's faces. Then a smile came to her lips. "No, it's fine. There's no point in going to all this trouble if we don't get to see her face at the end. Can you imagine her expression? When she realizes that _no one_ came to help her? That she only got out because of _our_ mercy?"

Sophia chuckled and shook her head wonderingly. "Holy shit. You're a real piece of work, Ems."

"I try my best." said Emma with a wink. "I'll do the honors."

Emma made her way through the crowds of students in the hallways. As she drew near to Taylor's locker, she heard a series of loud _bangs_. Impacts against metal. There was a thin trickle of blood leaking from the ventilation slits near the top of the locker.

Shit, had Taylor been banging the back of her head against the locker door until it bled? It was just like Madison had said, she was going crazy in there. She was glad she had taken Madison's advice to end Taylor's ordeal. As _decisive_ a display of power as it would have been, to drive Taylor insane in plain sight of the rest of the school, she didn't want it to end like that, for...she sighed. For a number of reasons.

Emma put a confident stride in her step as she walked up to the locker. She didn't have to worry about observers. The students passing by were doing their best to ignore the spectacle. Victims. The ones who were afraid of being next. They didn't want to get involved.

She peered in through the ventilation slits. It was dark inside the locker but she could make out a tangle of dark hair, matted with trickles of blood. The banging stopped. Taylor must have sensed that she was there, somehow. She put a smirk on her face.

"Taylor. Looks like you've gotten yourself into a tight spot."

There was no answer.

"It's so sad. So _cruel_." said Emma. Her voice was sickly sweet. "Someone stuffed an ugly smelly mess in your locker. And then they stuffed some bloody trash in there along with you. It's hard to tell the difference between the two by now. The resemblance is uncanny." She paused. "But don't worry, Tay. I'm sure one of your friends will be right along to let you out."

There was no answer.

"If you're such a loser you don't _have_ any friends, though, you'll probably be stuck in there until lunch time." She paused, then gave a fake gasp. "Gee, Tay, do you think the kids in this school might leave you in there for an entire day?"

"Emma." came Taylor's muffled voice. It was hard, tight, and pained. Almost unrecognizable.

"Yes, Tay?" said Emma sweetly.

"I know what you did." said Taylor.

Emma made herself laugh. "Oh, but I haven't done anything wrong. I've come to save my poor best friend Taylor from the cruel bullies. If you beg-"

"I know all about your murderer friend. You saw the kills, you covered up the crimes. You and your _lawyer_ dad! Bet you twisted it around in your head so you thought your lies made you a hero. What do you think the police will do to you when they find out? What do you think the bar association will do to your dad?"

Emma's jaw dropped. Taylor knew about Sophia? About _Shadow Stalker_? How? She spoke, as much a matter of reflex as anything else. "You, don't know what you're talking about, you don't have-"

"Shut up! I have proof, I have everything on you and your friends! I've had it for months!" Taylor's heavy breathing came from inside the locker. "Fuck you. I put up with your shit for so long. I didn't rat you out. You'll be charged as an adult. I wanted to spare you from that shit. Maybe I believed you'd see the light and be my friend again. But you just burned that fucking bridge!

"Now you listen to me, _best friend_. You and your dad want to stay out of jail? You're going to stop this pointless bullying shit. You and your 'friends' don't lay a finger on me or my stuff, you don't talk to the teachers, you don't talk to me, you don't fucking _look_ at me. And you're going to let me out of this locker _right fucking now!_"

Emma couldn't move. She could barely breathe. No. This was impossible. It was a secret, Taylor couldn't know, _no one_ knew. No one could ever know.

Taylor must have taken her silence as a refusal. She continued on her tirade, her voice growing louder, harsher, unstable. "You think you have protection? They'll throw you under the bus when they know what shit you've pulled! I don't care who's a murderer. I'm not stupid. If anything happens to me or my dad, a certain lawyer is going to put certain proof online for the public to see and you'll be fucking ruined by that limelight you love so much. Now you have five seconds to let me out and apologize on your knees or I'll stop being _merciful_!"

Emma's heart was hammering, her eyes wide. She wanted to talk to her dad, to Sophia, but they weren't there for her. This wasn't supposed to be happen. When Taylor pushed she was supposed to step up and push back. Harder, stronger. Taylor was the weak one, the victim, and she was the strong one. But Taylor's impossible words told her that she wasn't on firm ground anymore. That she had _never_ been on firm ground, that for months she had been standing on a tall cliff stepping closer and closer to the edge, and that pushing back one more time would mean stepping off and falling into a bottomless abyss...

The only thing that broke her paralysis was the fact that she had intended to let Taylor out of the locker from the start. She put a trembling hand onto the lock and entered Taylor's combination to open the door. The numbers a boy had witnessed in secret and told her a month ago in exchange for her favor.

Taylor's back was stained with blood trickling from the wounds on the back of her head, covered by her blood matted hair. She toppled backward and Emma caught her in her arms. Emma lowered herself to her knees to let Taylor's body lie on the floor, supporting Taylor's head on her lap. More blood was running down Taylor's face, covering her eyes and staining her lips.

"Taylor. Uh, shit." Emma stammered. "I, I'm sorry. I didn't mean-, uh, I mean. How did you-"

Taylor's face was _twisted_ into an inhuman rictus grin, of pain or triumph or something in between. She forced words out of her mouth one by one, syllable by syllable.

"Better." she said. "Eight. Teen. Point. Six. Two. Three. Six..."

Taylor's voice trailed off.

"Eighteen? I don't get it." said Emma.

Taylor rolled over and tried to support herself with her hands. She made it halfway to her feet before she collapsed, her arms draped over Emma's shoulders and her face buried against her chest.

"T-talk about it later." gasped Taylor. "Going to puke now."

Emma's eyes went wide. "Wait, what do you-aaagh!"

Thirty seconds later, Taylor fell unconscious and limp in her arms.

...

It was two days before Taylor woke up in her hospital bed.

Her eyes were glassy, and she screwed them shut to hide from the daylight shining through the window. She complained of a migrane that made it impossible to think or move out of bed. The headache didn't respond to conventional treatments and only relented after a dose of heavy-duty opiates that left her nearly out of touch with the world.

But for all that, she woke up smiling.


	3. Chapter 3

"So you're telling me you _don't know_ what they did to my Taylor." said Dad.

"Yes," said the doctor. A short, squat man whose name tag identified him as Antonio Vasquez, MD. "I'm afraid we haven't been able to diagnose the cause of her migranes. They do seem out of proportion to the superficial injuries she-"

"_Superficial_. Is that what you call it when-"

"Yes. Superficial." said the doctor, seemingly unperturbed. I was impressed that he could face down Dad's simmering anger without a twitch. Then again doctors probably have to deal with angry patients and relatives every day. "The damage was limited to a few bruises, cuts, and scrapes that should heal in a week or so. Our X-rays and MRI came back negative for broken bones, brain damage, or any other injuries. This superficial damage would only produce some degree of pain localized to the scalp, and that would have responded to the painkillers."

Dad folded his arms. "You're _not_ sending Taylor home like this. She can barely get out of bed-"

I let their words wash over me, paying them only a faint strand of my attention. At any other time I would have been hanging on their words. I would have gone through the doctor's pronouncements with a fine-toothed comb for anything I could do to help my headaches. I would have tried to speak up and calm down Dad's boiling temper. It would be embarrassing if he got into a shouting match and had to be dragged out by security.

But now...I had more important things to deal with. I would let Dad and the doctor deal with the practical matters of my treatment, the medications and doses and discharge paperwork Meanwhile, I would handle the _internal_ part of my treatment.

I gazed at the vast array of futures in my sight, scattered like an endless sea of shining pearls. The futures had once formed a vast, beautiful mosaic. An enormous mural of stained glass with each colored pane a window into another world, showing people, scenes, universes, all branching and connecting to the universes in other panes. The proof that I had become a parahuman.

In the locker I had been able to _command_ the panes of stained glass, order them to organize themselves themselves into clusters and weigh their probabilities against each other. That was what had saved me, then. That was how I saw the shining golden futures where Emma was my friend again, and how I saw exactly what I had to do to get there.

I had only gotten a glimpse of those golden futures, but it had been enough to take a big step in the right direction. To speak the magic words that made Emma let me out of the locker, get down on her knees, and say she was sorry. In less than a minute, the chance she would stop the bullying and become my friend again rose from 0.0165479017645719% to 18.623601591333360%. From an impossibility to a fighting chance.

I still didn't know what to make of those magic words. I had plucked them from futures where I went mad in the locker and spouted random lies, threats, and paranoid accusations. But my power had shown me that a few specific accusations would miraculously strike home and pierce Emma's heart. It was crazy, but apparently one of her friends was a _murderer_, a criminal with friends in high places, and she and her dad had covered up the crimes.

What the hell, Emma? I knew something must have seriously screwed up her head but I never thought she'd become an accessory to _murder_. There were so many questions I itched to use my power to answer. Was her murderous 'friend' someone from outside of school? Or was it one of the popular girls? Fuck, was it one of my other bullies, like Sophia or Madison? Was the golden path I saw a monkey's paw, giving me back Emma as a friend but setting off her crazed murderer friend on a vengeful killing spree? Was it a path to get Emma back as a true friend, or was it merely a path to blackmail her into putting on an act for my benefit?

But I couldn't ask any more questions now. The mosaic in my mind was _shattered_.

It _hurt_. The worst headache I ever had, growing worse every instant that I paid attention to it. When I first woke up I hadn't been able to think, to move, to do anything but writhe in pain and moan and dry heave in an attempt to vomit out my guts.

After a day of ineffective treatments the doctors had given me heavy-duty painkillers that let me handle it better. The new medications didn't stop the pain but they let me stop worrying about it. The feeling was hard to describe. It was as if I could detatch myself from the pain, detatch myself from all the troubles of the world around me and simply let myself drift, comfortably in the embrace of a soft, warm, fluffy cloud of haze. It still hurt like a motherfucker, but I could smile and go through the motions of life if I absolutely had to.

But I knew the medication was only a stopgap, a temporary measure. If I left myself drift away and did nothing more, the pain would come back as strong as ever when I returned to reality. I had to fix the underlying problem. The only way to fix it was to _work_. Concentrate on the shattered shards and slowly, painstakingly piece them back together into an orderly mosaic once more.

The work was slow and painful, but somehow relaxing at the same time. Like pulling out splinters. Little stabs of pain each time I moved the shards and they ground against each other, followed by waves of relief when they slotted back into their proper places. Only there were _trillions_ of shards, even in the smallest clusters.

The only part of my new sight that was working properly was the secondary part. The blurry, smoky window that didn't respond to my will, that was locked in to show me my chances of being attacked, trapped, or victimized in the near future. It only cost me a mild pang of pain to look into the window and it didn't seem to need maintenance like the master mosaic did. I decided to call the blurry window my _threat detector_, although maybe _bully detector_ would be more appropriate. It was currently giving me a clear reading.

_99.7% chance of being free from attack in one hour's time._

Reassuring...yet oddly not. There was an 0.3% chance I'd be attacked in the next hour in the hospital? _Me_, a random patient in a random room? At that rate the hospital would be suffering one or two random attacks on their patients per day. Very unsafe for a hospital. Unless the possible threat was somehow related to me? Maybe Emma's Dad or her secret murderer friend was coming to hospital and they'd freak out if they saw me. I'd have to watch out for them, maybe use my power to find out who was coming-

The shattered futures responded to my line of thought and made a shaky attempt to sort themselves into clusters, sending a wave of mind-blasting pain through my head. I quickly clamped down on the futures before they could go any further. Lesson learned. Don't use my power until I fixed it up properly. And even once I fixed the mosaic back to its original condition, I knew that each use of my power ripped its fabric in a way that would take thirty minutes to an hour of focused maintenance to repair. That meant that I wouldn't be able to use my power to answer every question. I had to save it for the important ones.

Something jostled my arm. I tore my gaze from the futures and looked up to see my Dad standing in front of me protectively, as if he was defending me from the doctor.

"-expected better than this!" he said, nearly shouting. "Do what's best for Taylor!"

"Mister Hebert, we've done everything for Taylor we can. Headaches sometimes occur in the wake of physical trauma without any clear cause. They may come and go, lasting for days or weeks before disappearing, or in rare cases continuing to become something more chronic. My advice is to keep a careful watch and consult your primary physician if her headaches don't improve in a week or so. Also..."

The doctor cleared his throat. "It may be hard to accept, but it is also possible that the migranes have less to do with her biological condition than her psychological condition. That's outside my area of expertise, but I can refer you to a good-"

Dad's response was immediate, his voice hard. "Think carefully before you complete that thought. Are you saying my daughter is malingering? That she's lying about her symptoms to get out of school?"

"Not at all." returned the doctor cooly. "I'm saying that your daughter's ordeal was more than a simple physical injury, and that she'll be best served by getting professional help for the other aspects as well."

"You're passing the buck. What are we _paying_ you for if-"

I reached up and tugged at Dad's shirt. "Dad, it's fine. You don't need to make a scene. They did everything they can for me. If they can't help me, they can't help me."

Dad let out a breath. He clasped my hand in his, and I could feel the tension in his body. The fight hadn't gone out of him. But he would give up the argument for my sake.

"Thank you for understanding, Taylor." said the doctor. "I want to assure you that we've done everything we can. I have to prescriptions for you to take home. First, we've given you antibiotics as a precaution against infection. Take the pills two times a day for two weeks. Remember to complete the course of treatment even if you feel perfectly healthy."

I nodded. We learned about antibiotic resistance in school. I didn't want to come down with a superbug because I forgot to finish my meds.

"Second, we've been giving you vicodin for your migranes after they were unresponsive to conventional treatment. Since it's more effective than anything else we've tried, I'm giving you a prescription for a limited supply. Again, remember to follow the instructions. One tablet every four to six hours as needed for pain, _only_ as needed, and no more than six tablets a day given your body weight. These are heavy-duty painkillers and you want to minimize their use to avoid the side effects."

I nodded again. I didn't know much about pain meds, but I vaguely remembered that vicodin was one of the dangerous ones that came up in newspaper articles about celebrities going into rehab.

"Okay. I got it." I said. I tried to give the doctor a smile, but I felt a pang of pain in my head and my smile came out like a wince. The doctor caught my effort, though, and gave me a thin smile in return.

"Very good, Taylor. If you have any further questions or concerns, please contact us or make an appointment with your primary physician. Best of luck with your recovery." He turned to Dad. "Mister Hebert, you can see the front desk for the paperwork you'll need for your insurance. It's been a pleasure."

The doctor left the room. Dad let out a deep sigh and squeezed my hand. "You sure you're going to be all right, kiddo?"

"Yeah. Give me, um..." I regarded the shattered futures in front of my eyes, judged how long it would take to repair them. "...a week and I'll be good as new."

Dad gave me a smile, but there were lines of worry on his face. "Good to hear. I'm glad you're confident. Don't feel like you have to pretend you're better, okay? Take as much time as you need."

"Don't worry, Dad." I said. "I'll be better in a week. I'm sure of it."

"I hope so." he said. "Here, I brought your clothes. Why don't you get changed out of the hospital gown while I take care of the paperwork?"

Fifteen minutes later we were outside in the daylight. I took my first look at the outside world since I got my power. It was a cloudless day and the sky was a particularly vivid shade of deep blue.

I took a deep breath of fresh air and smiled. A fresh day, a fresh start. I had just taken the first tablet of my medication and my headache was reduced to a dull throb, muted by the comforting, warm glow that suffused the world around me.

It was an absolutely beautiful day. The sky was particularly stunning, seeing it for the first time with my power. The blue sky before my eyes was mirrored, replicated in trillions upon trillions of shards of futures, each one beginning with a panoramic sight of that same beautiful expanse of deep blue.

I felt a sudden urge to go exploring, to take in the whole wide world with my new vision. To go to the beach and spend a day staring at the ocean, watching the waves rolling in across trillions of futures. To go to a baseball game and see trillions of crowds erupt into cheers and applause moments before the ball came into play. To take a trip to the countryside and watch trillions of sunsets color the horizon in shades of orange and red.

"Taylor? Are you okay?" said Dad.

"I'm _great_." I breathed.

A flicker of motion in the air above us caught my attention. At first I thought it was a bird or a plane, but as it drew closer I realized it was a superhero. _Glory Girl_. One of the junior heroes who went to Arcadia high. She was in the news every other week for beating up gangsters with her family's team, the New Wave.

Glory Girl slowed down as she approached to land on the roof, carrying a white-robed figure in her hands. That would be her sister, the healer Panacea. She must be dropping her off for one of her volunteer shifts at the hospital.

The futures in my mind glittered with glimpses of motion, of human shapes in security guard uniforms and others in white costumes. Oh. Those must be futures where I rushed back into the hospital to introduce myself to the heroes. That's right, I was a parahuman now too. Maybe I could ask them for advice about powers, or to ask if Panacea could cure my headaches. It was probably a good idea to meet them, but-

My head throbbed. Right. I didn't have any proof that I was a parahuman. My mosaic of futures was shattered and it would be a week before I finished putting it back together. At the moment my only super power was having a terrible headache, plus a threat detector that wouldn't give me a reading unless...well, unless they planned to seriously attack me. And I hadn't even told my _Dad_ my secret yet. How could I handle telling a complete stranger?

I sighed, and told myself my decision about entering the cape scene could wait. I could always talk to the heroes later. I was pretty sure they had a help hotline for new parahumans to give them a call.

Besides...Glory Girl and Panacea were _superheroes_. I was at the opposite end of the spectrum, the loser shunned by everyone in my school. I couldn't imagine our meeting going well. An image came to my mind of me running up to them in public and blurting out incoherent nonsense like a dumbstruck fangirl, embarrassing them and making an ass out of myself.

No, I would come prepared. I'd always done better by planning my conversations. My power would let me do it even _better_. I would wait until my power recovered. Then I would ask if contacting the heroes was a good idea. I would ask how to make a good impression on them, or at least a not-making-a-fool-of-myself impression. Until then I would use my power to stay safe and keep out of cape business.

_99.9+% chance of being free from attack in one hour's time._

Right. Before I came out to Dad, before I thought of becoming a hero...I was going to fix my power, and use it for what it was _meant_ for.

I was going to go back to school. I was going to stop the bullies. And I was going to show Emma the true meaning of friendship.


	4. Chapter 4

I laid flat on my bed, rubbing my fingers on my temples, a damp cloth draped over my eyes. Almost there. After five days of effort the mosaic of futures in my mind was almost fully reassembled. Just a little bit more to go. Five or six hours, tops. If I got it done in time to get a good night's sleep tonight, I would be able to go back to school tomorrow and get started on my project of reclaiming my lost friendship with Emma.

The work was exhausting, though. As I moved and manipulated the futures they resisted, sending sparks of pain into my head. It was like nerving yourself to push needles into your skin to give yourself an injection, again and again and again. You knew it wouldn't kill you, that the pain would only be temporary, but it still took its toll.

I lifted the cloth away from my eyes for a minute to glance at the clock. Four hours since my last dose of medicine. I stretched out a hand to find the white plastic pill bottle on my nighttable and swallowed another two tablets of medication. It was technically against the dosage instructions, but the doctor didn't know the root of my problem.

The doctor thought the painkillers were for managing _symptoms_, for treating the headaches that resulted from an unknown illness. But I was using the painkillers to treat the root _cause_. To let me rebuild my mindscape without being bothered by the pain, to give me the stamina to stay awake for twenty hours a day without suffering from boredom as I patiently pieced the futures together. I was repairing my power more than twice as fast as I could have otherwise. By the end of the day I would be finished and I could stop using the meds a full week ahead of the doctor's schedule.

I was already feeling the benefits. After another hour and a half of painstaking work I was still as alert as ever, and it was easy to notice when my immediate futures showed a common pattern, a movement in the hallway outside my room.

"Come in, Dad!" I called, an instant before his knock sounded at the door.

There was a pause, and then he came in, chuckling. "You knew I was coming, huh?"

"Your regularly scheduled worry visit."

"I'm that predictable?"

I smiled. "Nah, heard your footsteps."

"Sounds like your getting better, kiddo." said Dad. He was silent for a few seconds. "Are you _sure_ you'll be up to go back to school tomorrow? You say you're feeling better but it doesn't look like it to me."

I frowned. He had a point. I had been lying in bed for eight hours with the lights off and the window blinds pulled shut. From his perspective I seemed as sick as ever. He didn't know how close I was to repairing my power, how the stillness and darkness weren't absolutely necessary for me to function anymore and were now just optimizations to help me concentrate on finishing the job. I sat up in bed, took the cloth off my face to meet his eyes.

"There's no need to hurry, Taylor." he continued. "Take your time. I spoke to Principal Blackwell, and she agreed to give you plenty of time to complete the work you miss. However long it takes."

It was tempting, the idea of taking more time to recuperate. To do it at my own pace instead of devoting every waking minute to repairing my power. But every day I waited to go back to school was a day Emma was left alone with the other bullies. The same ones who had planned that sick torment for me. My magic words had shaken her resolve but the numbers in my head had told me that the bullies still had the upper hand. They would speak with her, use their influence to draw her back into the fold, make it harder and harder for me to pry her away from them.

I swallowed, put what I hoped was a reassuring smile on my face. "I'll be fine, Dad. I promise. My headache is a lot better today. I spent most of the time sleeping, actually-"

I stopped. As I spoke I saw my threat detector changing, giving a new reading.

_97.4% chance of being free from attack in one hour's time._

It was ticking down with every second. 97.3%. 97.2%. Still safe, extremely safe, but...not promising. Who the hell would attack me in my own home? Had Emma told the other bullies about my magic words and led them to assault me at home? Or...I hated to think about it, but was Dad was going to get angry at me, insist that I stay home and then lock me inside if I didn't agree?

Dad gave me a stern look. "It's not your headache that I'm worried about. It's the other kids at school. I can't let you go back if the kids who did _that_ to you aren't punished. If they know they can get away with doing that crap to you ever again."

"They're not going to do it again-"

"How can you know that? Taylor, I'm your father. I'm here to protect you. But I can't do anything for you if you won't tell me what's wrong. I feel like I don't know my own daughter anymore. Apparently these kids have been tormenting you for months and I didn't know a thing about it. They leave you bedridden for a week and you _still_ won't tell me who did this to you."

"I didn't see who did it."

Dad's expression turned darker. "Taylor, are you telling me you have so many bullies that you can't guess who did it?"

I didn't respond. Couldn't. If I told him who was behind it, it would ruin my chances of redeeming Emma.

Dad looked at me helplessly. "I look at you here, sitting on your bed and smiling at me and making a brave face, and then I imagine you going back to school and having to face the kids who did _that_ to you, and..." he clenched his fists, turned his face halfway to the side. As if it could hide the raw emotion on his face.

"I don't have to face them alone." I said. "Emma saved me. She saved me from the locker and took me to the nurse after I fainted."

"I'm glad you have a friend to stick up for you, but she can't always be there for you." said Dad. "She was at school when they put you in that locker. I don't know what happened between you two but you haven't talked with her once since it happened."

I grimaced. That was a necessary evil. I needed to talk to Emma more than anyone, but without my power to guide me I was more likely to screw it up and drive her back into the arms of the other bullies. I had to wait until my power was repaired, then I could talk to her and get started repairing _her_.

"Just...just be there for me, okay Dad? Please. I'll tell you if they bully me again. I'll tell you everything. I promise."

"This doesn't feel right, Taylor. Will you at least talk to Emma?"

_95.2% chance of being free from attack in an hour's time._  
_95.1%_  
_95.0%_

Damn it. Dad wanted me to let Emma come over. It was too soon.

"Emma called again today. This is the fifth time. She's called every day you've been sick. She said her other friends want to talk to you too." Dad met my eyes. "You say you'll be counting on her to protect you at school. Then _talk_ to her. Figure out a plan to keep yourself safe."

"I..."

Dad pressed his hands against the top of the bed. Tension in his body he couldn't release. "I understand if you need space. If you won't let me protect you. But please, Taylor, please. Promise me you'll talk with your friends so _they_ can protect you."

"I'll do it tomorrow morning. When I'm feeling better."

"You don't need to be ashamed of your sickness. She'll understand. That's what friends are for. True friends accept you as you are, stick with you even when you're at your worst."

I managed to suppress my scoff. I shut my eyes and tried to think. It was too soon. I couldn't use my power freely. But I _could_ use it if I truly had to. I could get answers to five or six questions, maybe more if I was willing to accept incapacitating headaches for another day.

Give in to Dad and talk to Emma, and risk her trying to bully me at home while my power was crippled? Or refuse Dad and risk him putting me under house arrest? I didn't know which way was best. There was no easy answer. I felt a momentary sting of hatred for my Dad. He was doing the same thing to me as the bullies did at school. Nowhere to run, scrambling to find the least shitty option from the handful of shitty choices they gave me.

...then I remembered that I didn't have to suffer that uncertainty, that anxiety anymore. Never again. I was a parahuman now. If I didn't know what path to follow I could ask my power to supply the answer. I braced myself for pain and posed the questions to my power.

Chance Emma will put a stop to the bullying and be my friend again, if I talk to her now and use my power?

_29.5592953338959345%_

If I don't talk to her and wait for tomorrow?

_13.9295320010599595%_

I let out a sharp breath and fall back onto my bed as the waves of pain slammed into my skull. The mindscape I had painstakingly pieced together had _ripped_ at the seams, sent shards of gleaming futures scattering haphazardly in all directions and dimensions. It would take more than an hour of work to repair the damage.

"Taylor? Are you okay?" came Dad's voice. "If your headache is that bad, if you _really_ don't want to talk to Emma I won't make you, but-"

"Mmmrgh." I moaned. I forced myself to sit up. "No. You're right, Dad. You're totally right. I'll talk to her." I managed an approximation of a smile. "Can...can you call her and tell her? I need to clean myself up. Take a shower. Make myself presentable."

Dad nodded, with a relieved smile. "Of course. I'll call the Barnes and let them know."

The minute he left the room, I let out a low moan and pressed my forehead into my hands. I couldn't talk to Emma like this. Asking my power another few questions would turn me into a wreck. I could already get a rough sense of those futures. Confronting Emma in my room and weakly collapsing onto my bed or even fainting in mid-conversation. A show of weakness that would invite her to act like a bully again.

_94.0% chance of being free from attack in an hour's time._

But it was too late to take it back. I had already committed.

I snapped open my medicine bottle and downed another two tablets, made a cursory effort at straightening up my room, and hit the shower. I felt the medicine take effect halfway through my shower, like a warm, soft blanket wrapping itself around my mind. The pain loosened its hold on me and my thoughts began to flow freely again. I stood for a few minutes under the spray of warm water and let myself relax, let myself go and simply enjoyed the sensation. Set aside my worries for once and let myself simply _be_.

By the time I left the shower and finished toweling myself off, I was feeling much better. I could even make myself smile. Getting Emma back wouldn't be easy. It would take time and effort, countless steps. But my power assured me that it was absolutely possible. The futures were _right there_, floating in front of my eyes. And if I used my power properly, asked the right questions to chart my path, I would take five steps forward for every one step back.

For the first time in more than a year, I found myself smiling at the prospect of facing Emma. _One more step._


	5. Chapter 5

I picked out my clothes with care. I couldn't compare to Emma's fashion model looks and dress sense, but I would do my best to look presentable. I rummaged through my closet and found a set of clothes that I'd never taken to school. Ones I'd kept at home so they wouldn't get ripped up or stained by the bullies' pranks. I hesitated before putting them on. If Emma pulled something on me here-

_99.8% chance of being free from attack in an hour's time._

Good. If Emma bullied me in my own house I wouldn't have to put up with her shit forever. I'd be able to kick her out within the hour.

I spent the next fifteen minutes planning our conversation. What would I say to her? What would I demand from her? There was so much I wanted to to make her answer for, but I didn't know what would tug at her heartstrings and make her see the error of her ways, and what would set her off.

I had always played it safe with the bullies. Took the first opportunity to end the confrontation, to protect myself, to escape. But if I never confronted her she would never change her ways. I would have to take risks, spill out my heart and make demands, and trust my power to lead me to safety.

I don't know where I got the courage. Whether it was the certainty my power gave me, or the warm glow from my medication, or finally getting fed up with months of putting up with Emma's shit. But when the doorbell rang, my normal sense of dread and anxiety about facing the bullies was dampened, muted, barely there at all. _I could do this._

I heard Dad and Emma's muffled voices in the living room. I peered at the mosaic of futures and found that I could get a rough sense of their conversation. Polite smiles and solemn tones. They made their way to my room and I opened the door the instant before they arrived.

"Emma. Long time no see." I said.

"Taylor! I was so worried about you. You're looking so much better, I'm _so_ glad." Emma was wearing a broad smile. One I knew from experience was one of her wide selection of fake ones.

Emma took a step forward and put her arms around me in a light hug. If not for the warning from my power I would have flinched and drawn away. As it was I managed to give a show of confidence. I returned her hug and held her tight, held on to her for a second even after she tried to draw away, before I released her.

As I held her I tried to remember what it had been like to hug her when we were still friends. When it had still been an innocent gesture of friendship, before it had become another tool for power plays and intimidation. What had changed? Was there some clue in that simple moment of contact to tell me whether it was honest or a deception? When I got Emma to be my friend again, would I be able to hug her and know simply from that contact that she'd changed back?

Dad was watching our facade of friendship with a smile on his face. "I'll leave you two to have fun. Remember what we talked about, okay kiddo."

"Okay, Dad." I said.

I stepped forward to close the door. When I turned around Emma was sitting on the edge of my bed. She was fiddling with her fingers on her lap, her eyes downcast. Her clothes were below her usual standards. A baggy shirt and old, faded jeans. Like the clothes _I_ wore to school. Was that a strategy of hers? Trying to get my sympathy?

Emma raised her eyes and met mine. "How did you find out?"

Her voice was soft, her expression carefully blank. I hadn't been able to plan our conversation very far, but I had guessed she would hide her emotions. She didn't know how much I knew about her crimes and she didn't want to give anything away.

The problem was that I truly _didn't_ know anything about her crimes, not beyond the magic words my power had told me to speak. The faint glimpse I could see of my immediate futures told me that if I got her to reveal her crimes I was going to be surprised, shocked, there would be an argument with raised voices...no. I couldn't let that happen. I had to keep up a front, pretend I had all the answers.

"You're not as sneaky as you think you are." I said. I put a smirk on my face. It was almost easy. It helped that I was feeling a little schadenfreude seeing Emma be humbled for once.

"This is big, Taylor. Not just for me and her, for you too. I don't think you understand what you've gotten yourself into. You don't out a cape."

_What._

My mind went blank, my prepared questions and demands slipped away. A cape? I had expected Emma to be covering up for something dirty. A crime of passion committed by one of her dad's business partners, or a mother who beat her child in a fit of rage and went too far. But she was friends with a murderer _cape_. A villain.

What the hell have you gotten me into, Emma?

Emma leaned forward. "You didn't think of that, did you Taylor? I'm teling you for your own good. I looked up the laws when I found out last year. If you tell anyone what you know the PRT will find out and throw the book at you. Leaking state secrets, reckless endangerment of a Ward and her family by putting them at risk of retaliation by villains. The DA will be drooling at the chance to win points by prosecuting the hell out of you. The conviction rate is over eighty percent."

She was smiling at me, like a cat that caught the canary. _A Ward_. She was friends with a Ward. A hero who was a killer, who was being protected by the state, who, who-

I did the best I could to cover my shock and keep my reaction believable. As if I was only shocked by her argument and not by everything else in this fucked up scenario. I closed my eyes, gave a long, slow sigh. Then I came forward and sat beside her on the bed.

I had no idea if she was bluffing me or telling the truth. I steeled myself and asked my power. If I found out all the details about her crimes and the murderer cape and I then went public with them, would I get taken to court? The medication in my bloodstream let me keep a straight face while a trillion sparks of pain danced through my skull, as the mosaic in my mind tore itself apart and reassembled.

_4.3345005968802021% chance I'll be put on trial, if I go public with the details._

The legal threats had been a bluff. I allowed the smirk to return to my face and looked Emma in the eyes, held my gaze steady. "It's not a crime to out a Ward if you're reporting her for murder. Or if you're reporting her friend and her dad as accessories to murder."

Emma's eyes narrowed. Sharp and bold and undeterred. But I had become an expert at reading her expressions, the fine gradations of her cruelty. There was worry underneath.

"You have no idea what you're getting into." she repeated. "I was trying to break it to you gently. I thought you were enough of a goody two shoes to follow the law and keep out of trouble. It's not the law you should be worried about, though. If you think you can attack a cape and count on the law to protect you you're in for a nasty run-in with reality. Heroes and villains are above the law. They made up their own rules to follow. The unwritten rules."

"The unwritten rules?"

"That's why capes don't go after each other in their civilian identities. Cape life and civilian life are off limits, total separation. If a PRT agent finds out Kaiser's name they don't attack him when he's at home with his family. If one of Kaiser's goons finds out a hero's name he leaves his wife and kids alone.

"Do you get it now Taylor? Do you get what's going to happen to you? If you break the rules, the rules don't protect you anymore. If you out her for what she did as a cape-" Emma gave a vicious smile. "Do you think she'll have any more mercy for you and your dad, than she had for the gangbangers she killed? I saw her do it. She killed a man like it was nothing. He was helpless, beaten, and she dropped him off a roof. Washed the blood off her hands and came to school the next day."

Oh God. I should have known. The murderer, the _murderer_, she was friends with a murderer who would kill to protect herself. That had been part of my magic words, hadn't it? I had told her that I set up an arrangement with a lawyer to go public if someone tried to hurt me and dad. But that had been a lie. I didn't have any arrangement, I didn't even know any of the details yet. If the murderer found out what I told Emma and came after me...

Was it really true? Would the cape really kill me? I grit my teeth and forced the mosaic of futures to rearrange itself.

_6.3624293761581810% chance Dad or I will be killed or seriously injured, if I go public with the details._

Low probability. Another bluff. Or...no. _Not_ a bluff, I realized in horror. Six percent was far too high. A six percent chance the cape would come after me for revenge _and succeed_. There would be a higher chance she would _try_, maybe much higher if I got police protection and she had to bypass it to get to me.

The killer cape would seriously try to murder me. Maybe as a last desperate act of freedom before she was arrested for murder, or as an act of spite before escaping the Wards to become a villain. A six percent chance of death or crippling injury. I...I could live with that if it was only me, but if she came after my dad...

No. It didn't matter. I wasn't going to go public anyway. I didn't have proof of her crimes that would convince a jury.

I had to stick to my plan. Convince Emma that I had the dirt on her and that I was completely willing and able to spill it. I tapped into the simmering anger I was holding back, the anger I had been holding back for months under pressure from Emma and the other bullies. I gave her a withering glare.

"Fuck you Emma. You betray me for no reason at all, send a constant stream of pointless shit at me for a year, stuff me in the nastiest locker ever, and now you're giving me death threats to avoid getting what you deserve. No. No way in hell am I going easy on you. I told you I took precautions in case your cape friend attacked my family."

"I'm not threatening anything. I'm doing you a favor. Telling you what she's going to do to you if you spill."

"Did you tell her what I know?" I said.

"No." she said. "Not yet. I didn't want to watch you get yourself killed."

"I didn't know you cared." I said bitterly.

A peculiar expression flashed over Emma's face, something I couldn't read. Pain? Regret? Then it was gone and she spoke with a venom that sounded almost desperate. "I don't care about you. I _never_ cared about you. You're a loser, Taylor, a complete waste of space. If you disappeared from the world no one would care. But if you get yourself butchered by a cape you'll leave an ugly mess. Have some decency and make it clean."

My throat went dry. I swallowed, tried to keep my composure. Emma had said worse about me before. But this struck home. Here I was trying to redeem her, _save_ her, and she was tearing into me worse than ever. Somehow she sensed what I was doing and knew just what to say to rip out my heart.

I...I couldn't let her get to me. That was her talent. She knew me better than anyone. She was sick, now, and using it to hurt me, but in the future when I fixed her and she was my friend again she would use it to _help_ me. I closed my eyes and tried to block out the ugliness of the present. Forced myself to remember the golden futures I had seen with my power, the carefree days that lay ahead of us after she became my friend again. Eating greasy fast food together at Fugly Bob's while she demonstrated the trick to wrangling a healthy meal out of the menu by knowing how they fudged the calorie counts. Convincing her to read Jane Austen and getting her to admit that Persuasion had literary merit.

I had to push through this hell and make it out the other side. Focus on what I needed to do to convince her.

Who the hell was her killer cape friend? I wasn't a cape junkie but I could make a guess. The Brockton Bay Wards were mostly boys. I could only remember one girl, the space-warper Vista, but she was _young_, probably in middle school. It had to be the other girl on the Wards, but her code name and powers escaped me.

The Ward friend of Emma's was probably a girl in our classes. I thought the Wards all went to Arcadia High, but that was a rumor, maybe a purposeful rumor spread by the PRT. From the way Emma talked about her she was a _close_ friend. It would be Madison, or Sophia, or maybe Julia or Addie. One of the bullies.

That must be why Emma was refusing to give in to my pressure. The killer cape liked to bully me and Emma was afraid to ask her to stop. Could I afford to keep pushing her on this?

_38.5146884170708337% chance Emma will stop the bullies and be my friend again, if I refuse to back down._

Good. Better than before. I just had to stay the course.

"Emma." I said. "You can insult me all you want. You can threaten me all you want. I don't care. I'm not giving you an inch. You and your friends at school lay another finger on me and I'll go public with everything. I don't care what happens to me. I'll drag you down with me."

Emma stared at me. Shocked that I was resisting her. She licked her lips, then spoke in that artifically sweet tone of hers. "I'm looking out for you, Taylor. It's my prerogative as your best friend." She leaned forward. "Don't you care about your dad? Don't you care about your family? I thought you learned your lesson after what happened to your mom. You cried yourself to sleep for a week that time. How many weeks will you cry yourself to sleep this time, when your dad comes home in a body bag?"

My voice wavered and cracked, but somehow I managed to speak. She was trying to shake my resolve. I had to trust the numbers. I couldn't back down. "I t-told you. I don't care what it takes. It ends here and now. You're going to stop bullying me. You're going to make the other bullies stop too. You're going to-"

"I see. I should have known." said Emma. "A week of tears isn't much in the grand scheme of things. Your mom gave you love for all of her life and you only grieved her for a week. Now you're telling me that you want to treat your dad the same way. Disposable."

Her words hit me like a punch in the gut. I swallowed. I had to trust the numbers. I couldn't back down. "S-shut up, Emma. It's not like that."

"No, I understand. You learned your lesson the day you cried yourself out on my shoulder after your mom died. You learned that you're the type of person who doesn't grieve when your parents die. All you need is a little cry and you're right as rain. That's why you treat them as disposable, why you're willing to sacrifice them for your selfish needs. You held out for a few years but now you've finally found a perk that you're willing to spend your dad for. That's why you're so insistent on following your stupid blackmail plan and getting him murdered. You want to finish the job you started and turn yourself into a self-made orphan."

"No, I, I..." I couldn't give up. I had to trust the numbers. I couldn't back down. I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't, I-

Emma leaned further forward, her eyes wide, her face almost touching mine. "Tell me, Taylor. Do you think it'll feel as good to kill your dad as it did when you killed your mom?"

Tears brimmed in my eyes. I couldn't think. I couldn't speak. I couldn't look away from Emma's eyes. From her oh so innocent smile.

What had I been thinking? Why had I ever wanted to be friends with this girl? This _demon_?


	6. Chapter 6

Tears brimmed in my eyes. I couldn't think. I couldn't speak. I couldn't look away from Emma's eyes. From her oh so innocent smile.

What had I been thinking? Why had I ever wanted to be friends with this girl? This _demon_?

Emma was the root of all my problems. She was the one who betrayed me, the one who led the bullies, the one who drove away anyone who could be my friend. She was the one obstacle I absolutely had to deal with to survive, the problem my power was meant to solve.

Now I was going through hell for her sake. Inviting her into my home, opening up my heart, breaking my brain with headaches, all to carry us into the thin, shining sliver of futures where we were friends again. And at every step, _every step_, she spat venom and breathed hellfire with an insane determination to prove herself a bigger monster.

Fuck that. Fuck her. She just made my decision for me. She wasn't worth my time. She had never been worth my time. It was far, far, far past the time I should have given up on her.

I had power, now. I could use it to find other friends. _Real_ friends. Friends who wouldn't hate me and fuck with me on every little thing. Friends, who would protect me, support me, be there for me when I needed them. Who would love me like a sister, like a true friend would.

I could do more. I had used my power to pry Emma out of the pits of Hell. Made the infinitesimal sliver of our happy futures together grow larger and larger until it encompassed more than one third of the futures in my sight.

I could do the reverse just as easily. All I had to do was give my power the right demands.

_I wish you were dead, Emma._

The great well of futures rose in front of my eyes, a vast selection of worlds brimming with potential and ready for my command. I could taste them, they were _right there_ and all I had to do was pick and choose between them. Ways to ruin Emma, and her criminal father, and her murderer friend, and all the other bullies who were wastes of space in this world.

The trillions of ways to achieve my goal flashed before my eyes in an instant. Ways that wouldn't be traced back to me, ways to lead them into any fates I desired and make them suffer any torments I could imagine. Ways to get them humiliated, disgraced, thrown in jail for life without parole, disowned by their families, marked as child abusers, their money stolen away, their house destroyed, their lives crushed, killed in a car crash, killed by drowning, killed by a gas leak, killed by a fire, killed in a gang war, killed by the police, killed by a superhero, killed by a rabid dog, killed by an allergy, killed by a seizure, killed by a drug overdose, killed by a wasting disease, killed by domestic violence, killed by a fit of insanity, killed together by their own hands in a group suicide with their bodies lined up in a neat row in the school gymnasium all hanging limp from their nooses...

Most of the ways wouldn't even be hard. All I needed was time to think, the patience to plan, and the willingess to accept a few months of incapacitating pain. I had done it once already in the locker, when I tried to use my power to do _good_ and redeem my childhood friend. She had rejected me, spit in my face and dug her claws into me all the harder for it. Fine. That was her choice as a free woman, and it was the last free choice I would allow her to make in her life. My final gift to her would be to accept her choice. I would accept her as the demon she so desperately wanted me to believe she was, and send her straight into the Hell she deserved.

...and yet...and yet...

What always sustained me in my darkest moments was my conviction that I was _better_ than them. Better than the bullies. Better than this twisted shell of what Emma used to be. I didn't hurt people for my own benefit. I didn't take joy in their pain. I didn't give in to anger. I believed in love, and kindness, and mercy, and heroism, and all the other virtues my Mom and Dad had taught me.

I knew, in my heart, that if I dragged Emma to Hell I would be the first one to join her there.

Unbidden, a memory of the future danced in front of my eyes. One of the futures I had seen in the locker. Emma and I were having a sleepover with our other friends - friend_s_, plural! - and chatting excitedly about the movie we had watched on pay per view. There weren't any bullies there. There weren't any bullies _anywhere_. Emma had done a complete one eighty on her attitude and apologized for all the bad things she did. She and I walked the school hallways together, and we stuck up for any students we saw who were being bullied, and if the bullies didn't stop we called in her lawyer dad to get them suspended from school. She had convinced me to join after school clubs again, and I was the star of the chess team, and when I went to the state tournament she came with me to cheer me on...

The Emma in the memory overlaid perfectly with the Emma in front of me. The auburn hair, the beautiful features of a fashion model, the quirk of an eyebrow, the faint smile. The only difference was in the eyes. The demon in front of me in reality was predatory, eyes gleaming with a desperate malice. But my best friend in the future past had eyes gleaming and vibrant with life and love.

I was so close. The chance to reach that paradise was 38.5146884170708337%, as long as I followed my plan here and now, and it was growing with every choice I made. I only had to stay the course.

I had to keep the right perspective. I couldn't put myself through pain for the sake of the Emma in front of me, the demon who deserved to die. But the present was temporary. Transient. It only lasted a moment. The present was little more than an illusion, a veil put up to distract me from the part of reality that truly mattered. The _future_. The reality I would live with for the rest of my entire life. I had to look past the ugly illusion of Emma before my eyes in the present, and focus on creating the new and improved Emmas I would live with in the future for years to come.

And with that thought, I realized why Emma's numbers kept rising as I got closer to my goal. I had thought my chance to redeem her was only thirty eight percent because she was too resistant to change; and that the other sixty two percent of futures, the ones where I failed, were futures where she was too stubborn and evil to change no matter what I did.

But...maybe the truth was that, in the sixty two percent of futures where I failed, I failed because _I_ wasn't stubborn enough to _make_ her change. Maybe those were the futures where I was too weak to endure Emma's struggles against the fate I chose for her, her desperate hissing and venom-spitting and clawing against my grip, and gave up on the possibility of redeeming her. Maybe those were the futures where I gave in to malice and turned my power against her, where I condemned the demon of the present to Hell for my own selfish satisfaction, and prevented the good Emmas of the future from ever being born.

I wanted to believe that was the truth. That _I_ was the one in control of our fate. That my vast well of futures had trillions of paths that were _certain_ to make her be my friend again, one hundred percent, and it was only my own reluctance and weakness holding me back from grasping them. I wanted to believe that I could change _anything_ about _anyone_ if I worked hard enough. Even someone as screwed up as Emma.

And with that, I made my decision.

I refused to respect Emma's choice to be a demon. That wasn't her choice to make. That wasn't a freedom that people were allowed to have. I wouldn't stand for it. A true friend wouldn't let her best friend turn into a demon and do nothing about it. I had tried to stop her fall when she started hanging around the bad crowd. I hadn't been strong enough to save her then, but I was stronger now. I would crush the demon in front of me and reshape her back into the friend she was supposed to be. No compromises.

Yes. I had the power to save her. The power that gave me the absolute confidence I could cast her into Hell gave me the same confidence I could raise her to Heaven.

I wiped the tears from my eyes and swallowed.

"Emma." I said.

"Yes, Taylor?" she replied sweetly. "Had a change of heart?"

"No." I said. My voice was firm. "And don't interrupt me with nonsense while I'm speaking. I'm not done laying out the terms."

She blinked. "Terms?"

"The terms for you to follow if you want to stay out of jail. Your dad and your cape friend, too."

Emma's mouth gaped open. "But-"

"As I was saying." I continued. "You don't touch me. You don't touch my stuff. You don't _look_ at my stuff. You don't spread rumors about me. You don't insult me or try your shitty emotional manipulation ever again. I don't really care about it anymore but it's getting tiresome. Those terms aren't just for you, by the way. The same goes for Madison and Sophia and Julia and all the rest. You're all going to make them all stop. Or I'm taking you down."

"Then it's true." said Emma. Her tone shifted to anger. "You think your life is worthless and you don't love your dad either. You don't care if he dies and you have to bury him next to your-"

I folded my arms. "Go ahead. Throw more nonsense at me, if you think being an ass is something to be proud of. Have a hissy fit and a good cry. It won't change your fate. When you're done here you're going to go home, go to school tomorrow, and tell every one of the bullies to stay the fuck away from me. And you're going to make it stick. That's your fate, from now until the end of high school. Or you and your dad are going to be in the newspapers, and then you're going to be in jail."

Emma stared at me, a half dozen expressions flickering over her face as if she didn't know how to feel. Her hands twitched, curling and uncurling into fists. If my threat detector hadn't given me a better than 90% chance of safety, I would have thought she was about to slug me in the face.

Finally Emma's features settled into a mask of pain. Stung.

"Taylor. I get it if you hate me. I did a lot of shit to you. I admit it. You didn't show any spine, you can't blame me for pushing you to the floor with the other bottom crawlers. Now you're finally pushing back. I respect that. I'll stop talking about you, I'll stop messing with your stuff. If you want to punish me for what I did back then, that's fine with me too. I'm strong, I'm a survivor. I can take it. Do whatever you want to me if you think you can get away with it.

"But my Dad doesn't deserve to go to jail. He doesn't know anything about what I did to you at school. He's not a criminal. He only helped me cover up her stuff because I made him do it. I told him it would help my friend and keep a superhero in action, and he did it because he's a _good_ man who cares about his daughter and wants the gangsters and rapists off the streets. If Dad goes to jail he'd lose his job. We'd lose our house. Anne would have to drop out of college, we couldn't afford the tuition-"

"Yeah, being a criminal sucks, doesn't it?" I said.

Emma flinched. "I get it, you want revenge on me, but you're talking about putting my family on the streets. Threatening innocent-"

I scoffed. "Like you threatened my family two minutes ago. Except with justice instead of death."

"I thought you were better than that, Taylor. Is that the kind of person you want to be? A person who gets revenge on a girl by threatening her innocent family?"

"I'm not threatening anyone. I'm having _mercy_. I'm giving you and your dad a chance for a better fate. Follow my terms, stop the bullies, and you'll be fine." I narrowed my eyes. "Why the fuck are you fighting me on this, Emma? Are you so obsessed with bullying me that you're willing to throw your family under the bus to keep at it?"

Emma's composure finally began to crack. "I'll stop, I promise I'll stop! I won't touch you, I won't talk to you, I won't do anything. But the others, I can't control their minds! They all think you're a target, weak, a prey animal-"

"I told you. The terms go for Sophia and Madison and Julia and the rest, too."

Emma was desperate now. "I can't! I can get Madison to stop, maybe Julia and Addie too, but if Sophia wants to hurt you I can't stop her! No one can! You haven't seen her fight. I've seen her take down ten grown men in a minute and that's when she's _holding back_, nonlethal takedowns. Probably only two or three capes in the city can stop her if she's really trying!"

So Sophia Hess was the cape, the murderer. Given the shit I'd seen her pull at school I could believe it. I was sure she was the one who had shoved me into the locker.

I felt a chill. I had asked my power if the cape would attack me if I went public with her crimes. I _hadn't_ asked what she would do if I tried to blackmail her to stop her bullying. I had assumed that she'd take the former as a worse insult, but...

_5.2824055985418114% chance Dad or I will be killed or seriously injured, if I try to blackmail Emma and Sophia into stopping the bullying._

I cringed at the pain, and then cringed that my false assumptions had been proven wrong. More than a five percent chance Sophia would go ballistic and hurt my family. Why the hell did Sophia care _that much_ about bullying me?

It didn't matter. It was too late to change my plan. All I could do was use my power to manage the consequences.

"I told you, Emma. Sophia can't touch me. I gave the dirt on her to a lawyer, and if anything happens to me or Dad he'll make it public. Tomorrow you're going to tell Sophia that if she lays a hand on me her extracurricular activities will become public knowledge."'

"Sophia won't listen to me! She never listens, she does whatever the hell she wants!"

"You're her best friend. Figure it out. You're going to tell her to stop and make sure she understands damn well what will happen to her if she pushes me one more time."

"She won't listen! Do you think she'll listen to someone like me? She's on a whole other level. She's a killer, she's a predator, she's a superhero, and she fucking _hates_ to lose. More than anything she hates to lose to people weaker than her. You? You're the loser without a spine, you're the prey animal at the bottom of the food chain. You have no idea how pissed she's going to be when she finds out what you're trying to pull. You have no fucking idea. She's going to beat the shit out of you and make you tell her who your lawyer is and then she'll kill you fucking dead! That's why I came here to make you back off and save your fucking life!"

I leaned back involuntarily, away from her outburst. She was overestimating the risk, given my numbers, but...how the hell had Emma gotten me into this nightmare?

It didn't make any sense. Apparently Emma dumped me to become best friends with a psycho killer cape who scared the hell out of her and beat up anyone she saw as inferior. What the hell, Emma? Now she was _twisted_, ranting about losers and winners, predators and prey animals and food chains.

And Sophia was apparently a superhero. _Sophia_. The sadistic asshole who picked on anyone she could get away with. Who apparently took schoolgirls and their lawyer parents out on secret night expeditions to watch her murder people and then help her cover up the crime. What the hell, PRT? What was a psycho like her doing on a team of heroes? Don't you have psychological testing to screen them out? Or capes who could tell what she was doing? Hell, my power could tell you in two seconds the chance she'd kill someone if she thought she'd get away with it.

The whole situation was crazy. I wanted to fix Emma and turn her into a friend who would stop the bullies, my power told me that I had a good chance of doing it, but the more I learned about the nightmare she'd dragged me into the less sense it made.

Then I realized what I was missing.

I couldn't fix Emma unless I understood what had made her like this. That was what I had been missing since day one, since the day I came back from summer camp and Emma rejected me. She never told me why. The not knowing had gnawed at me. Kept me awake on sleepless nights, thinking that I was a loser and it was all my fault.

But now...for the first time in years, I had her cornered. I could get answers. I didn't need to ask my power for a number. I could already see her tearfully spilling her guts, a scene rippling through my immediate futures and repeating itself in trillions of variations.

"Emma." I said. "You're not making any sense. If you want me to believe a word you say, start from the beginning. Tell me _why_. You were my friend, and then you weren't. It wasn't anything I did. I never did anything to you. Even after you tried to make my life hell I never did _anything_ to hurt you. You never told me why. You evaded, insulted me, hid behind the bullies, and you _never_ told me why. Why did you betray me? How the hell did you get so screwed up?"

"I'm not..." Emma's expression _twisted_, pain and anger and fear rippling across her face. Then she looked away. It was long seconds before she spoke. "Okay. I'm screwed up. I'm not stupid, I can see it. It's not like you think. I don't hate you, it's just, I'm...I'm doing what it takes to survive."

"Really? Giving your old friend crap every day for a year, stuffing me into a toxic locker, that's what it takes to survive?"

She looked away again. "I'm sorry. I'm not proud of that. We went too far. It doesn't excuse it, but it was the principle of the thing."

"The principle."

"It's what Sophia said. Sophia...she saved my life back then." Emma paused, looked to me with an unfamiliar expression on her face. One she hadn't shown me for years, one she had always hid behind her mask. Vulnerability.

I nodded, and she began to spill out her heart.


	7. Chapter 7

"Sophia...she saved my life back then." said Emma. "Me and my dad. I never told you about it, because...I don't know. I don't know. I should have told you. It was gangsters, the ABB. They pushed me down, and they cut off my hair, made me eat my hair, and then they were going to _take_ me, sell into one of their...their farms, they called it. They thought my face looked too nice so they said I had to choose which part they were going to cut up with a knife." She licked her lips, raised a finger and tapped parts of her face, one by one. "An eye. My nose. My mouth. Or my ears, both of my ears."

Emma raised her eyes. She was studying my face, looking at the same parts one by one. Eye, nose, mouth, ears. "Can you imagine that, Taylor? Having to pick what part of your face is going to be ruined for the rest of your life? Knowing they're sadistic bastards who are probably going to cut them all off at the end as a joke?"

I thought back to what Emma had done to me, to the locker. "I get the idea."

"They thought I was a worm, lower than dirt, so low they could make me cooperate in my mutilation for their own entertainment." She leaned forward. "But I didn't take any of their choices. I threw the guy off and stabbed him in the eye with my nails. His _only_ eye. The asshole's probably blind now.

"That was when Sophia saved me. She kicked their asses in ten seconds flat. She saved me, but...I was in a bad place for a while, after that. I realized the world was sick, with animals like that who could attack me at any time and any place and I couldn't do anything to defend myself. I couldn't go outside, couldn't leave my room. You weren't there for me, you were away at summer camp.

"You could have called me. We had pay phones at camp, they would have let you-"

"I know! But Sophia was there for me. She saved me and she explained everything. The principle."

"That _principle_ again."

Emma gave a solemn nod, as though she was reading from a holy book. "Yes. There's a pecking order, a food chain. The strong at the top and the weak at the bottom. The strong can do what they want and the weak can't fight back. But it's not important whether you're weak or strong. What matters is whether you're the type to stay in your place. A winner or a loser. When you're in a crisis do you come out stronger, rise to the top? Or do you come out weaker, fall to the bottom and become a victim forever?

"Sophia saved me because she saw me fight back and she wanted a friend like her. A winner. A survivor. She recognized me as her kind and she protected me. I wasn't as strong as her but she was teaching me to get stronger. I was her project, she wanted to see how strong she could make me.

"I wanted to stay friends with you. Really, I wanted to, you were my best friend! But I had to show Sophia that you were a winner like us, a survivor. I thought it would be easy. I thought you were one of us.

"So I pushed you, I faked as if I hated you and put you in a crisis, but you...you idiot, Taylor, you never did a fucking thing! You never grew a spine! You let me push you harder and harder for months, until Sophia was convinced you were a perfect victim, a worm, the lowest of the low, and then I didn't have a choice! I had to keep pushing you down because that's your place, or else she and all the other girls would get the wrong idea and think I was turning into a loser like you!"

My jaw dropped. "You don't even hate me? You betrayed me and screwed with me for years because of your stupid _principle_ and you never even hated-"

"I do hate you! You were supposed to be stronger than that. When you let me push you around I couldn't stand being around you anymore. You were depressing. To think I had been best friends with such a whimp, why would anyone want to be around a loser like that? If I was in trouble, if the gang thugs attacked again, what could you do for me but turn into a useless pile of tears like when your mom died?"

I stared at her, speechless. _So fucked up._

"And now I hate you even more because you somehow grew a spine and it's too late. I can stop messing with you but...if I go easy on you, if I do a one eighty flip and tell the other girls to back off, do you think they'll listen to me? Do you think _Sophia_ will listen to me?

"I can't do it, I can't! If I don't tell Sophia why, if I betray her and identify myself with the lowest of the worms, she'll drop me and kick me to the curb. She'll make the other girls turn on me and she'll push me, push _both of us_ harder than anything I ever did to you. I can't stop her, I'm not as strong as her! And if I tell her why, what you're trying to pull with blackmail, she'll blow a vein. She won't let herself give in to a worm, she'll say it's predator or prey, kill or be killed, and she'll come to your house at night and kill you dead!"

Emma was panting, out of breath. Her eyes were watering with the beginnings of tears. She wiped at her eyes and lowered her voice. "I'm sorry, Taylor. I'm really, truly sorry for getting you into this. If I could snap my fingers now and take it all back, I'd do it. Now it's gone out of control and I can't stop it.

"I'll do everything I can. I promise. I'll stop messing with you. I won't tell the others to pick on you anymore. I'll find them a new target, send them after someone else. And I'll...I'll pay you. I'll get my dad to pay you off. I'll do whatever it takes. I don't think I can ever make it up to you, but...please. I can't go against Sophia. I can't tell her to stop bullying you. Please don't make me go against her and get both of us ruined. Please."

I almost felt a twinge of sympathy. Emma was vulnerable for once, pleading and scared for her life. But I'd seen her crocodile tears before. Even now, at her lowest point, she wasn't telling me the whole truth. She was trying to manipulate me, putting on an act and playing up her fears, fudging the details to make it sound like she was an innocent victim and it was all Sophia's fault. If I pushed Sophia with my power I'd probably get an equal and opposite sob story about how it was all Emma's fault.

I had no idea how to fix this. Emma was _broken_. She had rebuilt herself in the image of a psycho killer who only cared about picking on the 'weak'. She didn't realize how crazy she sounded ranting about food chains and prey animals, she actually thought I would appreciate her offer to send the bullies after some other poor girl as their new 'prey'. She had spent so long in that delusional, toxic headspace that she couldn't see a way out. The more I heard, the more it seemed impossible to reach past the demon's mask and draw out the old Emma from inside her.

But for all of that...the numbers in my head hadn't changed.

_38.7565179890998990% chance Emma will stop the bullies and be my friend again, if I don't back down._

Proof that I could fix her. All I had to do was find the right words to say. The words I said in the thirty eight point seven five percent of futures where I convinced Emma to take my side and stop the bullies.

I fixed my eyes on Emma and braced myself to use my power. My mosaic of futures was covered in rips and tears, and every question I asked was more damage, more pain. If it wasn't for my medication I would have passed out long ago. I was going to have to push myself to my limits and pray I found the answer before I fell apart.

What were the magic words?

'Emma, I'm sorry for what you went through. Those thugs put you through hell. But can't you see that you've become one of _them_? You put _me_ through hell, your best friend, for the sake of some bullshit about the food chain you were fed by a cold-blooded murderer. You're better than this. _We're_ better than this. If you change your ways and stop the bullies, I'm willing to forgive you. We can go back to being friends again.'

_8.7191146777701726% chance Emma will stop the bullies and be my friend again, if I say that._

Pain flooded through my skull. I winced and let my head droop, but I kept my eyes on Emma. My friendship wasn't good enough for her? I should have expected it. She was stuck in her toxic headspace where might was right and strength was everything. Of course she would reject me. I had to crush her mindset before she would listen to reason.

Emma was giving me a curious look. I hadn't been able to suppress the pain on my face.

'You're stronger than this, Emma. You not Sophia's slave. You can't stay in her shadow forever. Tell her what I told you. She stops the bullying, she keeps her hands off my family, or she goes straight to jail. Don't let her scare you. You call me a worm, but _I'm_ not afraid. Not in the slightest. If Sophia fancies herself a predator, then she understands carrots and sticks like any other animal.'

_12.4153072110165546% chance Emma will stop the bullies and be my friend again, if I say that._

More pain. I let out a low moan, felt tears come to my eyes. Damn it. Even after I stood up to Emma and blackmailed her, she still thought I was a worm who didn't deserve her respect. She wouldn't believe me when I told her I could protect her from Sophia.

"Taylor?" said Emma. "Are you still sick? You're scaring me."

Yeah, she was scared. Her innocent watering eyes, her fearful and vulnerable face. Yet behind it was the smug demon who refused to listen to my words and good will.

Fuck her for doing this to me. Fuck her for getting herself so screwed up in the head that I had to put myself through hell for her sake. I had a sudden urge to slap her, strangle her, put a fist straight through that vulnerable, innocent, oh-so-punchable face of hers and hit the demon underneath.

I tried to calm myself, took a deep breath and found that it came out as a gasp. No. If I hit her, if I resorted to violence, I'd be no better than the bullies. I'd drive her away and then I wouldn't be able to make her my friend again. And yet...with that thought, something tugged at my mind. The texture of the battered mosaic in my mind, the shape of my immediate futures-

_43.4625205181325660% chance Emma will stop the bullies and be my friend again, if I punch her in the face._

Another wave of pain rushed through my head, greater than before, but I was too shocked to care. What the hell. The path to friendship with Emma was...was...

Of course. I saw it now. It all made sense. I had thought I needed _words_ to fix her. I had been following the values Mom had taught me, the values of a university professor. Solve conflicts through words, honest debate, diplomacy.

But to fix Emma I had to appeal to the values of a high school delinquent. Boys sealed half of their friendships with fistfights and bruises, or so Dad had told me. Emma and I were girls, but I was trying to get her out from under the thumb of Sophia, who was _physical_ if nothing else. Sophia had taught her to believe in a food chain steeped in threats of violence and death. Now the only argument she would respect was one made with fists.

I couldn't pry off her demon's mask with words. I had to crush it with my own hands and rip it off her face.

I clenched my fists and stood. Emma startled at the abrupt movement and got to her feet as well. Sensing the threat. "You don't have to decide now, Taylor. I can come back later, when you're feeling better-"

I hesitated, seeing the look in her eyes. It felt unnatural. I wasn't a violent person. I had it ground into me by long experience that violence would always be punished. _My_ violence, anyway. The bullies knew how to get away with it. I _knew_ that if I hit her here it would come back to bite me. The teachers, the parents, the authorities were always on her side. What was I supposed to do, ask Emma to cover it up for me?

_48.5375323621096761% chance Emma will stop the bullies and be my friend again and I won't get in trouble for hitting her, if I punch her in the face and ask her to cover it up._

I couldn't help it. I laughed. I laughed, and the pain bursting through my head made my laughter come out shaky, unstable, and probably more than a little insane.

God, this was so fucked up. She was so fucked up. If I act nice to her, use sweet words and appeals to friendship, she rejects me and runs back into the arms of the psycho killer. But if I act like Sophia, beat her up and tell her to cover up her bruises, she accepts me and sticks up for me against the bullies.

I hated her a little more for that. For making me act like them. I would have to get into _their_ mindset too, convince her that I thought she _deserved_ to be beaten black and blue. But if that was what it took to fix her broken brain and make her be a good friend to me again...I would do it gladly.

"Taylor, uh. I'll just go." said Emma.

She moved for the door, but I was faster. I blocked her path.

"Emma." I said. "I've decided."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I've decided that I've fucking had it with you and your nonsense."

Emma's eyes went wide. She started to speak, but I cut her off.

"You don't understand anything. You have it all backwards. You know why I didn't hit back? Because I was _ignoring_ you, Emma. You weren't worth my time. You were too weak for me to care. Yeah, you made me cry, you broke some of my stuff, but I was strong enough to take it. I survived. I kept going forward with my life and I stuck to my principles.

"And you? You didn't have the strength to survive a fraction of that. You broke at your first taste of violence. You let the thugs get into your head and turn you into a copy of themselves, then you let Sophia make you even worse. You used to be popular because people _liked_ you, Emma. You were the fashion model with a head on her shoulders who cared about her friends. Now you're popular because you're good at sucking up to superheroes and making schoolgirls cry.

"Where did it get you? Are you stronger now? When you turn into a puddle of tears at the thought that people might find out about your crimes? When you turn into a simpering coward at the thought of standing up to Sophia? When you tell me your 'best friend' would betray you in an instant and has you scared to death? Every step you took to make yourself look stronger made you weaker instead. Now you're the lowest of the low, nothing more than a gangbanger with a pretty face.

"So I've decided to stop putting up with your nonsense. You don't get a choice. You're going to follow my terms, stand up to Sophia, and show real strength for the first time in God knows how long."

I tried to keep my gaze on Emma's eyes as I spoke, couldn't quite manage it through the haze of pain in my skull. The flickering visions I saw in the battered mosaic helped to guide me, letting me follow the grooves worn by the dim outline of my immediate futures. Emma was going to back away from me in shock and say-

"Taylor, please! I can't, I don't want you to get killed-"

And I was going to say-

"I get it. You forgot what it means to stick up for a friend. The only thing you understand now is brute force. So to start with-"

And Emma was going to take a single step backward, realizing what was coming, but I was already throwing my punch.

I missed my target. I had been aiming at the center of her face, at her nose, but she shifted to the side. My fist hit her just under the eye, with a solid _crack_ as it hit the bone of her eye socket. She fell to the floor with a grunt, though she didn't scream.

Emma looked up at me from the floor, her hands covering her injured eye. The same eye she had pointed to when she told me about the thugs who threatened her. With her hands covering her face she left herself open. I kicked her in the stomach for good measure, once, twice, three times, before she got one of her hands down to defend herself. I must have hit her in exactly the right way to knock the breath out of her. She wheezed and slumped to the floor.

I stood over Emma for long seconds as she lay on the floor. She was glaring at me, a facade of shock and anger, but underneath...

A flicker of motion in the futures in my head, the sound of footsteps in the hallway. "Dad?" I called.

"Taylor? Are you okay in there? I thought I heard a commotion."

"We're fine, Dad. Knocked over a chair."

A chuckle. "Don't have too much fun, you two. Taylor needs her rest."

"Just a few more minutes. Emma still says Bronte is better than Austen, but I think I've got her cornered."

Another chuckle, and Dad went back to the living room.

I put a smile on my face and offered Emma a hand. After a few more seconds of glaring at me, she accepted it and I pulled her to her feet. I didn't let go of her hand, though. I held her hand tight, leaned in until my face was almost touching hers, and spoke softly.

"Emma. I hope you liked my gift. I hit you just like you always wanted. A fraction of what you and your fellow thugs did to me, but it'll do for now. Now here's what I want to know. Are you going to go to the principal for help? Go to your daddy the lawyer? Go crawling back to Sophia with your tail between your legs? Or are you going to suck it up, stick up to them, and prove to me you have a fraction of the strength I've shown?"

Emma had a tear coming out of her visible eye, the one she wasn't covering with a hand. She nodded, once, and I released her. She left without another word.

The minute she left the room I collapsed on my bed. It was over. I won. I was safe.

_99.9+% chance of being free from attack in one hour's time_

I laughed. Yes, thank you power. I was absolutely, completely safe. And it was apparently possible to be euphoric, at the same time as being in agonizing pain, at the same time as being on the edge of collapsing into sleep. The world around me was wavering, my senses vivid and clear one moment and blurry and detatched the next. I didn't know how much was my success with Emma and how much was the residual effects of my medicine. Probably both.

I rubbed the knuckles of my right hand, still stinging and raw from the punch. I was a little disturbed at how satisfying it had been. Punching someone in the face was supposed to be wrong. It was against the law, it was assault and battery. I was a criminal now.

But I didn't feel bad about it. I only felt relief and satisfaction. The numbers in my head had told me it was the right thing to do to help both of us, and they hadn't led me wrong. I wondered how many more times I'd have to beat Emma before she became my friend again.

I forced myself to my feet and staggered to the doorway. "Dad? I'm going to turn in early tonight."

Dad appeared in the hallway, a concerned look on his face. "You okay, kiddo? Emma left in a hurry. She said you weren't feeling well."

"Pretty tired, yeah. I'm hoping-" My head throbbed, and I winced. "I'm hoping I'll feel better in the morning."

"Listen to your body, Taylor. If it hurts to move, it's telling you to rest. You don't have to go to school tomorrow."

"I want to go. Emma said she'll stick up for me against the bullies. I want to see it. She knows who some of them are and she thinks she can make them stop. Permanently."

"Good. I'm glad to hear it." he said. "That's what friends are for, right?"

I smiled. "Right."

I shut the door, turned off the lights, and collapsed on the bed. I let my mind drift. An abstracted part of my consciousness busied itself piecing my mosaic of futures back together. The mosaic was torn and savaged, my work of the last day and a half undone. It had been worth it, though. In the space of an hour I had nearly tripled my chances of stopping the bullies and getting my friend back. I had almost even odds, now.

I slowly drifted off to sleep, the forty eight point five three percent of bright futures dancing in my mind's eye.


End file.
